Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

Product Information

This is my favorite kind of book. Not only does it dissect the intricacies of interpersonal dynamics into fun charts and lists, but it also provides a helpful how-to for applying this information in your actual relationships, and to every aspect of your own life. I’m suggesting it to all my therapist friends immediately!"—Tikva Wolf,creator of Kimchi Cuddles and author of It’s OK, Feelings, I Got You and Love, Retold. As I’ve discovered, becoming the attachment figure for two women is an enormous responsibility, but there’s nothing unnatural or impossible about it. We can be the attachment figure for multiple children; we can have many best friends. We’re built for love—the problem is that we’re often afraid of love, because of the fears early experiences with love have instilled in us. Our products are environmentally friendly and used by market leaders to protect and secure goods worldwide.

The book advice tends to prioritize relationships over individuals. I don’t like this philosophically, but I’ll grant that many people do and will find it useful. Brunning, L. (2018). The distinctiveness of polyamory. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 35(3), 513–531. One concept the author touched on that I'd never seen before, is our childhood attachment patterns might be MIXED. We might have had one parent/adult to whom we enjoyed a secure attachment, and another who was inconsistent, even abusive/traumatic. As this translates to polyamory, we might have one partner to whom we are securely attached, and another with whom our attachment is anxious, avoidant, or mixed, possibly because they push those same buttons. This was tremendously helpful for me. It would be a shame, however, if only polyamorous people read Polysecure—because, as this book reveals, polyamorous relationships have a great deal to teach everyone about how to create dependable, enduring connections with others. Attachment theory basics All products are fully recyclable and as a responsible supplier we will discuss with you your design and as part of our

Subsequent research found that these childhood experiences with our caregivers shape our adult relationships, because they condition—in deep, unconscious ways—what we can expect from the people we love. Adults with a “hyperactivated” attachment system are more likely to make constant bids for attention, positive and negative, because they’re worried that loved ones will get bored and wander away as their parents once did. In contrast, children who suffered abuse or loss will deactivate their attachment system in adulthood: Since people are scary, then it’s better to expect the worst and not ask them for help. There are several different ways for psychologists to categorize adult attachment styles, but in her book, Fern breaks them out into four basic units: secure, dismissive, preoccupied, and fearful. Anyone even considering nonmonogamy would benefit from reading Polysecure. Jessica Fern does an excellent job of not only explaining attachment theory and applying it to nonmonogamy but also offering real steps readers can take and skills they can hone to help create the secure, satisfying relationships they want."—JoEllen Notte,sex educator and author of The Monster Under the Bed: Sex, Depression, and the Conversations We Aren’t Having I don’t really have much experience with poly and have really only heard bits and pieces about it. This book is a pretty good introduction to that world but also is a succinct and action-oriented overview on attachment and trauma and how to heal one’s old attachment wounds. Fern first starts by providing an overview of attachment theory and how trauma affects our relationships. She does a great job of conveying the science surrounding attachment theory while still making the content readable and relatable, such as by avoiding unnecessary jargon. I felt like I could see my own relational patterns reflected in her descriptions, and I think she writes so well about how our past experiences can influence us to pull away or grasp firmly onto people we have relationships with, without judging people for their trauma or their general relational tendencies. Jessica Fern is a psychotherapist, public speaker and trauma and relationship expert. In her international private practice, Jessica works with individuals, couples and people in multiple-partner relationships who no longer want to be limited by their reactive patterns, cultural conditioning, insecure attachment styles and past traumas, helping them to embody new possibilities in life and love.

and the later chapters revisiting attachment theory practically, in the context of relationships you might be in, provide some nice exercises/prompts. I learned abit here, including how much of what I already tended to do was part of actively building secure attachment with another person... and how I could look at it thru this lens, and add/tweak/refine. it was nice to be presented with a pretty simple (to my mind) toolkit to approach and/or reinforce this stuff. Paired with the help of a good, polyamory-competent therapist, I can imagine no better resource than this book for helping insecurely-attached people figure out how to do non-monogamy in a way that is happy and healthy, rather than constantly triggering and retraumatizing. Simpson, J. A. (1990). Influence of attachment styles on romantic relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59(5), 971–980. I won’t give away the secrets of Fern’s book in this review, but I will say the roadmap she offers for cultivating secure attachment with multiple partners is extremely helpful, and perhaps even revolutionary. At the end of the book, she stresses that people pursuing such relationships must, above all, earn a secure attachment with their own selves. While there have been several landmark books on polyamory, such as The Ethical Slut and More Than Two, and while there have been books on using trauma and attachment theory to understand how to navigate a wide range of interpersonal relationships, including different types of monogamous relationships, there have not been books using trauma and attachment theory to navigate having multiple partners.Brennan, K. A., & Shaver, P. R. (1995). Dimensions of adult attachment, affect regulation, and romantic relationship functioning. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21(3), 267–283. There are more than a few books out there about how nonmonogamy works. We haven't moved very far past them, most books are about what it is, how it works, the basics. But for regular relationships, those kinds of books don't really exist. For monogamous relationships, though, you have a seemingly infinite number of self-help books about how to make your relationships better. But these books are pretty useless for consensually nonmonogamous people. What is normal for monogamous relationships, the benchmarks, the agreements, etc., is not at all similar to what CNM people (as Fern calls them) have. POLYSECURE wants to be a relationship self-help book for people in nonmonogamous relationships, specifically people thinking about attachment styles. It is successful at what it sets out to do, though some of the task Fern has taken on slows her down a bit. But it's still so unusual to see this kind of book in the world that it feels radical. but I'm going to guess they'd be equally straightforward and constructive, and likely helpful if you're relatively newly navigating multiple relationships, and/or have come acropper and want to revisit/reflect. We ultimately developed a rare depth of attachment; we’re secure enough so that we’ve been able to love others without weakening our bond. In fact, loving other people (and kids and cats) together has strengthened our relationship.

The first third of this book covers attachment styles. The second third describes polyamory. The final third contains useful advice for people currently practicing polyamory.In the third installment of Suzanne Collins's New York Times bestselling The Underland Chronicles, Gregor must stop a plague from spreading through the Underland. Gives people a way to understand how they may be recreating old patterns by bringing their own childhood attachment styles into their adult relationships. More importantly, it offers concrete skills for how to use this knowledge to create healthier, more satisfying and secure relationship dynamics."—Max Rivers,author of Loving Conflict: How Conflict Is Really Your Relationship Trying to Go Deeper Robinson, M. (2013). Polyamory and monogamy as strategic identities. Journal of Bisexuality, 13(1), 21–38. Katz, M. I. L., & Graham, J. (2020). Building competence in practice with the polyamorous community: A scoping review. Social Work, 65(2), 188–196. https://doi.org/10.1093/sw/swaa011 Diamond, L. M. (2008). Sexual fluidity: Understanding women’s love and desire. Harvard University Press.

Rubel, A. N., & Bogaert, A. F. (2015). Consensual nonmonogamy: Psychological well-being and relationship quality correlates. Journal of Sex Research, 52(9), 961–982.As Fern argues throughout her book, polyamory can also reveal how optional attachment is to successful relationships. In consensual non-monogamy, you can have sex and friendship without attachment—as I did with my friend—and there’s nothing wrong with that kind of relationship. You can also have attachment without sex in a romantic relationship without anyone feeling a deficit. If one or both of the partners still want sexual connections, they’re ideally free to pursue them. Naava Smolash, who sometimes writes under the pen name Nora Samaran, is the author of Turn This World Inside Out: The Emergence of Nurturance Culture (AK Press, 2019). Mitchell, M. E., Bartholomew, K., & Cobb, R. J. (2014). Need fulfillment in polyamorous relationships. Journal of Sex Research, 51(3), 329–339. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2012.742998 I found the fourth and fifth point really interesting and it’s a shame that Fern did not dive into them. The book did not cover much ground at all on them. On the fifth point, I do resonate with it. I find it hard to untangle my feelings and motivations to pursue a non-monogamy identity and lifestyle from other parts of who I am, some of which I am already aware of, others of which are rapidly being made known to me – my queerness as a commitment of how to love and as a political stance, my avoidant attachment style which makes it relatively easy (at first, at least) to detach myself from my pals and (potential) metamours, my strong feelings against traditional, nuclear, heterosexual families stemming from feminist perspectives and personal trauma history, the realisation that the gendered way I have sex with my current partner is socially conditioned and also a way to cope with past sexual assault experiences (of no fault of his), and that I would like no longer to relate to my body and loved ones that way, and a deep desire to never stay still. I think I consider that a crisis of deconstruction. Fern critiques the prevailing assumption that healthy relationships are dyadic by in the field of attachment theory, and that behaviours out of the monogamous model is associated with insecure attachment styles. She additionally proposes that monogamous relationships may rely on the relationship structure rather than secure attachment to function.